New Women’s Fiction for Review: The Third Grace by Deb Elkink

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Deb Elkink will be touring October 1 – November 30 2012 with her women’s fiction, The Third Grace. This tour is part of a Kindle Fire giveaway. All tour hosts who participate are eligible to win!

The past casts a long shadow—especially when it points to a woman’s first love.

A single, thirty-two-year-old costume designer in Denver is climbing the ladder to success in the posh world of the arts. She projects cool self-possession, but confusion surges beneath her calcified exterior and her soul is thirsty, remembering . . .

When Mary Grace Klassen was seventeen—the summer her brother died—she fell in love with the French exchange student visiting her family’s Nebraska farm. François Vivier whispered seductively into her ear and filled her heart with longing for something more than her parents’ simplistic life and faith.Before François jilted her that long-ago summer, he made her feel likea goddess and renamed her Aglaia, one of the Three Graces of Greek mythology. She legally adopted the nickname, and ever since then Aglaia’s been recreating herself in the image of sophistication, convincing herself she’s left the naïve farm girl far behind. But “Mary Grace” stilllives within and is not so easily dismissed, as Aglaia is about to learn.

Dr. Lou Chapman, an urbane but conniving professor intent on acquiring tenure, woos Aglaia with a job offer and interferes in her personal life, manipulating her for selfish ends.She’s torn between Lou and her current boss, Ebenezer MacAdam—a fine, mystical old gent who has Aglaia’s best interests in view and is even sending her on a business trip to Paris.

Aglaialongs to tour theromanticcity of her dreams, especially to visit the Louvre and catch a glimpse of the Three Graces—the iconofFrançois’s flirtations. For years nowshe’s been conjuring up vivid fantasies about François, but when her mothergives her the perfect excuse to look for him in Paris, she resists—until she discovers sensual notes penciled in François’s own hand into the margins of a Bible he left behind, referring in cryptic detail to their magical summer together.

And thus Aglaia embarks on a dual journey across oceans and time, torn between the precepts of her rural upbringing and the artistic status of cosmopolitan refinement,in a search for herself.

The Third Grace has received the prestigious GRACE IRWIN AWARD for 2012, the largest book prize ever ($5,000) which is awarded to Canadians writing from a Christian perspective.

306 pages

You can visit Deb online at www.debelkink.com.

** Please Note: This book may not appeal to reviewers who are very conservative because of the sensuality and subject matter.

Book Excerpt:

Aglaia returned to the kitchen to refill her mug. Her cat stretched on the couch and yawned, his elfin tongue curling around a lazy “meow” before he bounded over to rub against Aglaia’s housecoat.

She picked him up and he climbed to her shoulder and arranged himself around her neck like a fur collar, his purring idling against her ear as she opened a fishy can of breakfast for him. The tabby was a barn cat, picked up at the SPCA last fall after her former cat lost his four-year battle against city traffic. She’d never buy one of those snooty Siamese or Himalayan breeds, and not just because of the price.

“Here you go, Zephyr,” she said as he sprang to the floor.

What her boss had said about names was true, she thought; they told a lot about a person and even about a pet. The farm crawled with cats when she was young but for some reason the Klassen family never labeled them “Fluffy” or “Snowball,” but talked about them in general terms like “the mama cat” or “that mean tri-color” or “the stray.” Dad liked them around to keep down the rodent population, and Mom always made sure, in the coldest part of winter, to set table scraps outside by the step. On occasion one cat or another made a mad dash into the kitchen, and Joel would always smuggle it into the basement for a quick snuggle.

Aglaia dubbed each of her cats “Zephyr” now—all three cats in turn that she’d owned since they formally named the first one on that perilous summer day in the hayloft.

Mary Grace hunts for the boys for an hour. She calls their names into the machine shop and the bunkhouse, and spies out the pasture but finds Joel’s horse unsaddled, unridden, standing against the backdrop of the thunderheads with its mane blowing. As the storm breaks the hot sky open, she thinks of the loft and scales the splintery ladder with the ease of her tomboy days. She doesn’t hear François picking on his guitar until she’s halfway up the barn wall. She hoists herself through the wooden doorframe into the loft and catches sight of Joel grabbing at the fleeing tomcat.

“He goes like the wind!” Joel complains.

She hasn’t climbed that ladder for over a year, and when she finds them there, it strikes her again what a haven the place is—the musty perfume of the bales, the daylight jabbing ghostly fingers through gaps in the shingles.

François is smoking something that smells sweeter than the hay.

“What are you doing?” She’s aghast that Joel hasn’t put a stop to it, if only because Dad’s been adamant about their never lighting matches in this firetrap. But more, she’s thrilled at the danger of what she’s walked into. She looks from François to Joel, and gets the impression the two have had words about it and François has won.

But she doesn’t leave the barn—she doesn’t run to tattle. How can she? François’s charcoal eyes smile away her indignation.

“You’ve come here to sing with me?” François asks as he strums a chord. “Or maybe to smoke with me?” He winks at her again. “Joel won’t try, but you will, non?”

He takes the joint from his lips and raises it to hers, daring her while Joel watches with distress in his eyes. She remembers the pact they made, but she takes the slightest puff anyway and starts coughing. She’s never even smoked a cigarette, never mind a joint. Joel grits his teeth but François smiles, and so she takes a second draw—this time deeper. She knows she should leave now, but hail as hard as Pharaoh’s heart begins a staccato on the barn roof.

The tomcat reappears to skulk near François, curls up against him without invitation, then snags at Joel when he reaches to pet him. “Let’s name him Zephyr,” François says, “for the west wind.”

François makes her feel like a Zephyr, nervous and needy and a little naughty all at once.

* * * * *

If you would like to review The Third Grace, please fill out the form below or email Dorothy Thompson at thewriterslife(at)gmail.com. Please mention which date would work for you. Deb is also available for interviews and guest posts.

Deadline for inquiries end October 25 or until the tour is filled. Thank you!

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